Fidelma Healy Eames

The Thoor Ballylee Yeats Exhibition opened by Guest of Honour Sabina Coyne Higgins.

Sabina Coyne Higgins, wife of the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, and in her own right an actress and dedicated supporter of theatre and the arts, opened the inaugural Yeats Exhibition at Thoor Ballylee on Saturday 18th June 2016. A native of Mayo, Sabina Coyne Higgins has a close relationship with Yeats and western culture as co-founder of the pioneering Focus theatre, and through her work with the Lyric Theatre Belfast, a theatre with a history of staging W.B. Yeats’s plays and those of his brother Jack B. Yeats, as well her long association with Druid Theatre, An Taibhdhearc, and other Galway theatre groups.

Yeats Exhibition Opening with Sabina Coyne Higgins and guests

Since the Tower flooded last winter it seemed unimaginable that the beauty and tranquility of this special place would be enjoyed so soon again. However through the sheer hard work and dedication of the local community and the generous support of local and international donors Thoor Ballylee re-opened with a bang for another summer season. Special guests Joseph Hassett, Yeats Scholar & Thoor Benefactor, Fidelma Healy Eames, Chair of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, and Councillor Michael Connolly all gave speeches for the exhibition launch. The event included local music from Gort Comhaltas and refreshments.

Using material from NUIG’s “Yeats and the West” Exhibition, and UCD’s “Yeats and His Muses” Exhibition (conceived and produced by Dr Joseph Hassett), Dr Adrian Paterson, Lecturer in English at NUI Galway has curated a new exhibition for the Tower which explores Yeats’s relationship with the people and places that most inspired his work. The Thoor Ballylee Yeats exhibition looks at the culture of the west, its crafts, stories, and songs; the central importance of the women in his life, most especially of his wife George; his talented family and long history of artistic collaborations, and in particular his close connections with the landscapes and people of County Galway, with Coole Park and with Thoor Ballylee.

Samuel Palmer, The Lonely Tower (1879). This etching was inspiration for Yeats’s ‘The Phases of the Moon’ and many other Tower poems.

A series of family and cultural events takes place over summer 2016 to honour Yeats’s memory, his heritage, and his links with the literary revival and with 1916. The Tower and Exhibition will be open to visitors throughout the summer from 10am to 6pm Monday – Sunday.

Sabina Coyne Higgins, wife of our President, Michael D. Higgins, and in her own right an actress and dedicated supporter of theatre and the arts, officially opens the inaugural Yeats Exhibition at Thoor Ballylee from 1pm on Saturday 18th June. A native of Mayo, Sabina Coyne Higgins has a close relationship with Yeats and western culture, as co-founder of the pioneering Focus theatre, and through her work with the Lyric Theatre Belfast, a theatre with a history of staging W.B. Yeats’s plays and those of his brother Jack B. Yeats, as well her long association with Druid Theatre, An Taibhdhearc, and other Galway theatre groups.

Thoor Ballylee May 2016

Since the Tower flooded last winter it seemed unimaginable that the beauty and tranquility of this special place would be enjoyed so soon again. However through the sheer hard work and dedication of the local community and the generous support of local and international donors Thoor Ballylee is re-opening with a bang for another summer season. Joseph Hassett, Yeats Scholar & Thoor Benefactor, Fidelma Healy Eames, Chair of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, and Councillor Michael Connolly will participate in the exhibition launch. The event will also include local music and refreshments. All are welcome to attend and children will have an opportunity to test their knowledge of the tower with the new Thoor Scavenger hunt.

Using material from NUIG’s “Yeats and the West” Exhibition and UCD’s “Yeats and His Muses” Exhibition, Dr Adrian Paterson, Lecturer in English at NUIG has curated a marvellous exhibition for the Tower which explores Yeats’s relationship with the people and places that most inspired his work. The Thoor Ballylee Yeats exhibition looks at the culture of the west, its crafts, stories, and songs; the central importance of the women in his life, most especially of his wife George; his talented family and long history of artistic collaborations, and in particular his close connections with the landscapes and people of County Galway, with Coole Park and with Thoor Ballylee.

Pamela Colman Smith, The Tower, Tarot Card Park 1907

A series of family and cultural events takes place over summer 2016 to honour Yeats’s memory, his heritage, and his links with the literary revival and with 1916. The Tower and Exhibition will be open to visitors throughout the summer from 10am to 6pm Monday – Sunday.

Doors and windows opened in Yeats’s tower, Thoor Ballylee, Co. Galway, June 2015, on the occasion of W.B. Yeats 150th birthday. A local community group, the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society has worked tirelessly to make this happen, following the closure of the Tower after flooding six years ago. The society is delighted to report that since the opening there has been a steady flow of visitors, over 3,000 people during the 3-month period. This figure does not even include children who attend free of charge. None of this would have been possible without the help and support of the local community and a staggering 30 volunteers who manned the tower for a total of 800 hours.

Senator Fidelma Healy Eames, Chair of the Thoor Ballylee Society, said ‘we would like to thank everyone who has visited the Tower and to all the volunteers who have made this possible. The entire project has been a labour of love and strength of conviction about the need to preserve our literary past and Yeats’ legacy for future generations. Let’s not forget that this is a project the state had abandoned save for the commitment and vision of local voluntary effort.’

Angela Guillemet, head of PR and Fundraising for Thoor Ballylee noted ‘No one should be excluded from experiencing the magic of Thoor Ballylee and sharing in the literary heritage that it exudes. We are calling on the local community, business, scholars, the media and on the government to continue their support for the project so ambitious plans to turn the tower into a world class cultural centre can be realised.‘

Come and see our audio-visual display, view our exhibitions, stalk the stairs, rooms, and battlements of Yeats’s tower in the poet’s footsteps, meet our bats and friendly helpers, and have a cup of tea. Seasonal opening until the end of September.

And please note there are a number of special events taking place in Thoor Ballylee over the coming weeks:

The cemetary in Roquebrune, France, where Yeats was buried after his death in 1939

Recent documents released to the Irish Times appear to indicate that the bones buried under a limestone headstone in Drumcliff churchyard, Sligo, are not those of W.B.Yeats. Or at least, not only his – with the war intervening after he was buried in Roquebrune churchyard early in 1939, the exhumation of what was by then a crowded and muddled cemetery in 1948 seems to have been of a reconstituted skeleton from several remains. New information also suggests this might have been done with the knowledge of his family.

Yeats’s grave at Drumcliff, Sligo

Yeats himself had asked that “in a year’s time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo”. But the revelations appear to confirm a long-held suspicion by scholars and some of the poet’s friends, such as Louis MacNeice, that it was not as easy as this, and the grand repatriation and state burial of 1948 might have been of the wrong body. It should be said that the family point to comments made in 1988 denying all such reports.

Corcomroe Abbey, Co. Clare, the setting for Yeats’s play The Dreaming of the Bones (1919)

With the poet’s late verse believing ‘I must lie down where all the ladders start/ In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart’ all this might seem strangely fitting. Seeking the spirit of a man who professed to believe in reincarnation will always be difficult. His interest in the preservation and restoration of old buildings (as evidenced by Thoor Ballylee) means his shade rather balefully even haunts our ghost estates. Yeats wove a phantasmagoria about places, stories, and people that make them almost seem immortal. Of course, no single place, whether in Sligo, Galway, Dublin, London, or anywhere in the world can lay claim to all of Yeats’s inheritance. All the same, “I feel Yeats’s soul is in Thoor Ballylee,” says the US lawyer, Yeats scholar and benefactor Joseph Hassett, referring to the poet’s former home in Co Galway. “It’s less important where the body is.” Thoor Ballylee is certainly written about more than any other place in Yeats’s poems and at least two books of his poetry are grounded there.

Thoor Ballylee, Galway, in Yeats’s ownership from 1917 until his death

Perhaps this is a reminder that, beyond reading his poems, a wonderful introduction to his essence is to visit those places important to him: which include Drumcliff, Coole Park, Merrion Square and Riverside in Dublin, Woburn Place and Bedford Park in London, Roquebrune, Ravenna, and Rapallo on the Mediterranean, places like Istanbul (Byzantium) and Tokyo (Edo) where he never set foot, as well as, pre-eminently, Thoor Ballylee, Co. Galway. In none of these places will we find his bones, but he is alive in them all. The tower is open daily all summer until September. For more information about how you can help keep it open, click here.

Prof. Daniel Carey, Ronnie O’Gorman and Sen. Fidelma Healy Eames of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, Sen. Susan O’Keeffe, and Dr. Adrian Paterson, at the launch of the ‘Yeats & the West: an exhibition of western worlds’ at Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway, 13 July 2015.

Monday 13th June saw the official opening of Yeats and the West: an exhibition of western worlds. Coinciding with the launch of the Galway International Arts festival, the exhibition was opened in style with the help of some very special guests, including the poet Moya Cannon. The exhibition featuring a number of talks and events runs through December 2015 and is free to the public. Members of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society joined the celebrations, which included speeches from NUI Galway President Dr Jim Browne, Professor Daniel Carey, the curators Barry Houlihan and Adrian Paterson, Senator Susan O’Keeffe, Librarian John Cox, and the special guest Moya Cannon.

These famous lines help us to understand the importance of place in Yeats’ life and poetry. Places of beauty form the source and substance of poetry, they evoke the flitting essence of life so hard to grasp. Places are where the magic of life is sensed and felt, the magic which our poet sought to catch, like butterflies, in his net of words.

Thoor Ballylee is undoubtedly such a place. It smells of poetry: the trees, the whispering weir, the fairy-tale tower, the rustic cottage…the whole atmosphere of tower, stream, and area.

One could imagine the poet dreaming Eithne imprisoned in the tower’s dusty loft, or himself looking from the window to the stream and out across the deep fields and blossoming hedgerows, himself ruminating words as the lazy cows chew the cud.

I can see him rising bleary-eyed from his cluttered desk‘because a fire was in my head’, and emerging from the foot of his tower where he might have

cut and peeled a hazel wand

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth like stars were flickering out,

I dropped a berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

For well over ten years the poet came here again and again to breathe in the inspiration of the evening air, of the clear morning, of the lazy afternoon in the company of his wife George, close to his great friend Lady Gregory.

W.B.Yeats was Ireland’s first Nobel prize winner. This is where he lived. It was here by the shady depths passing by his dream tower that he sought and caught his salmon of knowledge, the mythical fish of inspiration, at whose taste Fionn’s eyes were made bright.

We must therefore celebrate this place, Thoor Ballylee, if we really desire to get closer to the magic, the musicality, running through Yeats’ poetry.

Ladies, gentlemen and children, Thank you for joining with us in celebration today. It was in this spot that Yeats’ dreams were conceived, here that he sought to make them poetry.

This place, however, is not only important for poetry. It was central to forming Yeats’ identity. And it is so often that we look to poetry itself, especially that of an Irish poet, to catch a glimpse and form an idea of our own identity. In more recent times we have done this with Kavanagh and Heaney. Yeats was perhaps the first to unify us in this way.

Yeats’ true identity, and ours too, was not political, although he was a Senator, but rooted in places like this: in the charm of rural quiet, and rustic beauty. These things are real, and stay with us, regardless of all the conclusions and beliefs drawn by rational minds. Rest a while, take it in and savour it today.

This is not to say that Yeats was not a political poet. In a Seanad debate in 1924 when Yeats contemplated a united Ireland he said it would be won in the end not because we fight for it but‘because we govern this country well ‘by creating a system of culture which will represent the whole of the country and which will draw the imagination of the young towards it’. Wise words we must agree.

And Yeats has a lot to teach us in this regard. I read from his famous poem, ‘The Tower’, drawing its name from this very spot:

I choose upstanding men

That climb the streams until

The fountain leap, and at dawn

Drop their cast at the side

Of dripping stone; I declare

They shall inherit my pride,

The pride of people that were

Bound neither to Cause nor to State,

Neither to slaves that were spat on,

Nor to the tyrants that spat,

The people of Burke and of Grattan

That gave, though free to refuse—

Pride, like that of the morn,

When the headlong light is loose…

It is therefore a great pleasure, no, a great honour rather, to celebrate the regeneration of this magical place, for me to commend our outstanding local community, our donors local and afar, some you will hear more from later, but most especially our committee of dreamers, who have toiled against all the odds to declare Thoor re-open today, for our culture, for our identity, for our sense of selves.

But I being poor have only my dreams

I have spread my dreams under your feet,

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

With Thoor Ballylee, Yeats spreads his dreams under our feet.

We must be careful with them. Together then let us claim this tower. Help us on our journey to restore it. because ‘we have miles to go, miles to go before we sleep’ to realise our vision, to turn it into a home for all to enjoy, to re-claim our past and re-imagine our futures as Yeats did in 1916. To make it a place that will exhibit and tell not just Yeats story but our story. We need your help – volunteer, come along to our events, become a friend of Thoor. All information is available on yeatsthoorballylee.org

Minister Deenihan, I thank you for being with us today and for the unexpected honour you bestowed on me in asking me to chair this committee, Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society. I have a favour to ask you too – that you would take it upon yourself to convince the Government to lift up its head, look out and realise the treasure that Thoor is.

Today we are opening our doors to you and inviting you in.

Come with us. Thoor is the kind of monument that speaks so much more to us than any official column or statue. Let us mind it. It is living poetry, it quivers with life!

Due to our marvellous community support and the wonderful efforts of committee and sponsors and helpers, Thoor Ballylee has opened for Yeats2015. On W.B.Yeats’s 150th birthday, Saturday 13th June 2015, over 800 visitors and well-wishers made their way to the tower for a special opening event hosted by the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, with Senator Fidelma Healy Eames, founding sponsor Joseph Hassett, and Minister Jimmy Deenihan.

This Saturday 13th of June to coincide with W.B. Yeats’s 150th birthday, the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society is thrilled to announce the re-opening of the Tower for the first time in seven years. Minister Jimmy Deenihan, Joseph Hassett, Yeats Scholar & Thoor Benefactor and Senator Fidelma Healy Eames, chair of the Society, will open the event at 4 pm.

Niall De Burca, Internationally acclaimed story teller will perform at the event, which is followed by a community barbeque.

Ireland’s Nobel Laureate for Literature, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) spent his summers in Thoor Ballylee, where he was inspired to write some of his finest poetry. Yeats once said in a letter to Olivia Shakespeare that “We are in our Tower and I am writing poetry as I always do here, and, as always happens, no matter how I begin, it becomes love poetry before I am finished with it.” In 1928 he published a monumental volume of poetry, The Tower and in 1933, The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Both collections were inspired by the life, landscape, and architecture of the place, and feature many poems set and composed at Thoor Ballylee.

Senator Healy Eames, Chairperson of the Thoor Ballylee Society explains “Thoor Ballylee is re-opening on Saturday 13th of June and will be open throughout the summer. We are planning to develop the Tower into a legacy project of the Yeats 150th Celebrations which will draw tourists and Yeats scholars from near and far to savour this stunning setting and the depth of the Irish literary legacy. This has been a labour of love and strength of conviction about the need to preserve our past for future generations. With Thoor we are reclaiming our past. As Chair of the Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society, I would be delighted if you would help us on our journey’”

The Society is calling on the local community, media and other interested parties to support the project so ambitious plans to turn the tower into a world class cultural centre, which will accommodate a new exhibition, a cafe, bookshop, and space for exhibitions, lectures and classes. The Society calls on the public to check the website to find out more about the project, read updates on progress, learn about the tower and its history, join in discussions, make donations, and discover exciting sponsorship opportunities.

We are delighted to say that thereafter for the summer, the tower will be open all week, from 11am to 6pm Monday – Sunday.

This area of South Galway has many cultural connections to Yeats and to Lady Gregory. Other celebrations that are taking place in the vicinity include:

Kiltartan Gregory Cultural Society Picnic Enjoy a recital by Coole Music Ensemble, poetry reading by local school children, face painting for the younger generation and a Trad session with Gaillimh Theas Comhaltas. Come in period costume. Time. 12.30 to 2.30 pm.

The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society had a breakthrough this week when Joseph Hassett, an accomplished American lawyer and long-time Yeatsian pledged €31,000 to the tower. Hassett first came to Ireland to attend the International Yeats Summer School in 1963, thanks to fellow Irish Americans in his hometown of Buffalo, New York who funded that scholarship. Since then, he has become an avid Yeats collector, scholar, and an author with Oxford University Press. He is a graduate of Canisius College and Harvard Law School, and holds a Ph.D. from University College Dublin and is a member of the bar in Washington, D.C. and New York. He is a proud Irish American whose great-grandparents emigrated from counties Clare and Cork.

Senator Fidelma Healy Eames, Chairperson of the Thoor Ballylee Society explained “It would be an utter travesty if this iconic building and national treasure was not reopened on time for Yeats’s 150th birthday in June. With Joseph Hassett’s generous donation we are now in a position to re-open the tower and invite the public to a great celebration and cultural event in the Tower and gardens on the 13th of June”.

“Yeats predicted that Thoor would return to a ruin, but to leave Thoor as it is is to leave beauty behind. It’s a place of solace, and we must wake up to the treasures we have.”

Healy Eames is hopeful that the group will raise more funds at a poetry and music event on Poetry Ireland Day (next Thursday, at 8pm) and at a rooftop auction (Sunday, May 31st, at 6pm), at which a local auctioneer, Colm Farrell, will dress up as Yeats and sell items from the top of Thoor Ballylee.

“The building is in a good state,” says Healy Eames. “It has been cleaned, but it needs work done on its electrics and toilets. I have asked Simon Harris, Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works, if the OPW might work in collaboration with local people in the future management of it.”

There is still much further work to be done. An objective of €1 million has been set to deliver the Yeats cultural centre, which would secure the tower’s permanent re-opening. This would include the development of the Yeats exhibition, a writers in residence program, a cafe, bookshop, and space for exhibitions, lectures and classes. The Yeats cultural centre should provide a huge attraction for the area and boost tourism revenues for the region. Supporters are encouraged to donate what they can or to become a Thoor Ballylee Friend for just €25. Exciting cultural events are planned in the next few weeks and months, many of which involve a rare chance to see inside the tower.

Posts navigation

Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society

Welcome to Thoor Ballylee.
This fourteenth-century Hiberno-Norman tower was described by Seamus Heaney as the most important building in Ireland, due to its close association with his fellow Nobel Laureate for literature, W.B.Yeats. The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society are actively seeking funds to ensure the tower and associated cottage are permanently restored and reopened to visitors as a cultural and educational centre.